PIW Ranks World's 50 Top Performing Oil Companies in Latest Annual Standings.

LONDON -- Petroleum Intelligence Weekly published today its annual ranking of the world's 50 largest oil companies, which is widely recognized throughout the oil industry as the leading source of comparative assessments on the performance of the world's oil companies. While Saudi Aramco again comes first, followed by Exxon Mobil, this year's list shows many important changes.

E[acute accent]Of particular note in this year's "Top 50" is Venezuelan state-owned PDV's slide. Long in second place, PDV has now fallen to fourth, underscoring the troubles afflicting Venezuela's oil industry. Shell is in a tie for fifth place with BP, due partly to its huge reserves downgrade. Iran's NIOC rose primarily because of an increase in reserves, while BP benefited from the creation of its new Russian affiliate TNK-BP.

E[acute accent]The standout performer among state firms is Russia's Gazprom, which is moved up in the rankings this year from 31st to 24th place. It is likely to move much higher next year -- possibly into the top 10 -- with the takeover of Rosneft and the likely acquisition of key Yukos upstream assets. The ongoing consolidation of the Russian oil industry is producing larger firms that can compete with the super majors and the largest Opec national oil companies.

E[acute accent]Although the era of the mega-merger looks to have passed, acquisitions continue to play the most important role in changing firms' standings. For example, among the big movers, US independent Apache moved up eight places to enter the rankings at 47th.

E[acute accent]The rankings are based on six operational criteria that allow the comparison of private sector and state-owned oil companies.

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